Dunedin City Council is being called upon to honour its commitment to underwrite the lossmaking Masters Games. The biennial veterans sports event was a huge success on the field: more than 6000 people took part in a total of 7203 events, and almost half were out-of-town visitors. However, the Masters Games was unable to secure a naming rights sponsor. It also lost one silver level sponsor and was unable to use the University Union as its Games Village. That caused the games to lose revenue of $153,364, a report to the DCC said. #bookmark

The council has an agreement to underwrite the games, and Thursday’s finance, strategy and development committee meeting will consider a minimum $25,000 ratepayer contribution.

“In spite of this mood of austerity, council found enough merit in the construction of artificial turf at Logan Park to see that jump straight to the front of the queue and be included in the budget. You could argue it’s a deferral, effectively a concession to the sporting lobby in exchange for the delay of the full Logan Park redevelopment, but seeing it included is insulting. To tell us that investing in sports infrastructure has the city’s books screaming towards insolvency and there is no money to spend on new initiatives is one thing. To then defer, delay and reduce funding for cultural assets like the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Fortune Theatre, and community necessities like maintaining playground safety, so they can free up the money for even more sporting infrastructure strikes a chord of brazen arrogance the likes of which I didn’t think even the Dunedin City Council was capable of.”
D Scene 25.4.12 (page 6) #bookmark